Into the Blue
by Omnicat
Summary: On her fifteenth birthday, Relena Darlian saved a life and brought home a gun.


**Title:** Into the Blue

 **Author:** Omnicat

 **Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** Takes place during episode 2, "The Gundam Deathscythe", and contains spoilers up to episode 11, "The Whereabouts of Happiness".

 **Warnings:** None.

 **Summary:** On her fifteenth birthday, Relena Darlian saved a life and brought home a gun.

 **Author's Note:** I've been wracking my brains all week trying to think of a way for Relena to have gotten her hands on the gun she used to shoot at Une. Then I remembered Sally saying Relena was the one to have brought Heero into her hospital, and poof! There was this. Enjoy!

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 **Into the Blue**

Later, Relena could not remember the swimming. She remembered a rope (where did it come from?), remembered Duo Maxwell's hands (how did she get up there?), remembered pulling and being pulled, like she was lugging the ocean and the ocean wanted to suck her down and never let go, remembered her legs burning, her arms burning, her lungs burning, burning burning burning. She remembered Duo Maxwell shouting, telling her she was crazy, was she trying to get herself killed, he wasn't sticking around to get arrested, she was on her own, he was outta there.

She remembered agreeing with him. Heero had caused devastation throughout the port, had pulled a gun on her, had threatened to kill her, had brutalized the medics and taken off with their ambulance. But did any of those things, or even all of them put together, warrant a death sentence? Could she just stand there and watch while two boys barely older than her tried to kill each other, or leave one of them to drown?

So she'd kicked off her shoes, stepped over the railing, pushed off from the submarine and plunged into the water.

When her conscious mind found back its grasp on her senses and control of her limbs through the maelstrom of shock and exhaustion, she was alone and didn't know where her gloves had gone. Heero was on his side beside her, frighteningly pale and still on the dark deck. Limbs still trembling from cold and exertion, she scooted over to him, felt his cheek, his wrist, listened to his breathing. She didn't know how sleeping people were supposed to sound, but she could hear no gurgling or rasping or wheezing, so she assumed he wouldn't be choking any time soon.

Not unless someone came to do it by hand, anyway.

The dock to which their submarine was anchored was empty, but the sirens hadn't stopped blaring for a minute, the din of human chaos trying to find order and the roar of flames undiminished. Sooner or later, someone would realise they were there. Someone would want to know _why_ they were there.

With a mixture of urgency and dread bubbling in her stomach, Relena scrambled up. She'd have to get out of there - rushing off with the party in full swing had been bad enough, coming home escorted by soldiers and a string of consequences would break her parents' hearts. But what about Heero? He needed a real doctor to check him out. Surely the soldiers on this base would give it to him as soon as they were able - as soon as the fires were out (Heero'd caused those explosions, hadn't he?) and their own wounded taken care of. But then what? He never should have been here in the first place. Only an hour ago, she herself had left her birthday celebration in pursuit of him, intending to stop him from carrying out whatever nefarious scheme he had. She didn't think the military would be as lenient as she had been.

Looking at the prone form, with its hair plastered to its face, the sickly hue of its skin, the frame looking so fragile, all Relena could think was _He's just a boy._ It was the first thing that occurred to her when she found him on the beach, it had chimed through her head every time she remembered _I'll kill you_. But only now, over twenty-four hours later, seeing him sprawled in a boneless heap before her feet, half naked and with strips of blood-soaked blue silk around his arm and leg, did it truly hit home to her. _He's just a boy._ Just a boy. Felled by an explosion he had set off himself.

Even with his eyes closed his expression looked stricken, desolate. Like it had done in that one fleeting moment when he looked at her and said her name, unguarded and vulnerable - before taking out his gun and settling it between her eyes.

Just a boy in over his head. _You're in over your head, Relena._ Well, that made two of them, then.

What could he possibly be caught up in, to wear someone like him down? He was dangerous, no doubt about it - strong enough to bowl over grown men, capable of using a gun, of detonating torpedoes, of causing enough havoc to throw an entire military base into a frenzy. And that mobile suit... He'd been up to something tonight, he must have been up to something to have followed her to St Gabriel yesterday, and who knew what he was up to for tomorrow? But those _eyes_ \- with eyes like that, with the pain and emotion in them, he couldn't possibly be a bad person.

Could he?

Shouting voices nearby.

The heartbeat of panic exploding in her throat decided for her.

Ignoring the heaviness of her water-logged skirt, forcing her wobbly knees to bear the weight, she looped her arms underneath his, pulled his limp body to her chest, and dragged, dragged until she found a patch of shadow deep enough to maybe, hopefully hide him from the eyes of hurried and pre-occupied passer-byes on the dock.

She would go back to Pagan and get him to bring the car further down, and together they would carry Heero away and bring him to a hospital. He would be kept under surveillance there, and she would come to visit to keep an eye on him and finally find out who he was, how he had come to wash up on that beach, what he had come to do.

Kneeling to put her shoes back on, Relena's eyes fell on a glint of polished metal against the dull exterior of the submarine. Heero's gun.

If they found that gun, no amount of quick lies and verifiable half-truths would convince them he had not come here with bad intentions, was not the one to have caused all this.

She stooped down and took it gingerly, unsure of what to do with it. Throw it in the ocean, keep it? Putting it back on Heero now was impossible; not only did she have no intention of returning it to him until she knew what was going on, bringing it into the hospital would arouse suspicion.

Her first instinct was to hurl it over the edge of the boat, to fling it as far away from her as possible, part of her afraid that it would explode in her hand against her will. Instead, she closed her hand around it tightly. It was just a piece of machinery, she told herself, for the first time in her life. A collection of mechanisms and chemical reactions, harnessed to create a source of blinding, deafening power. Without a human hand and a human will to use it, it was nothing but a clump of metal. Just because it had the potential to be dangerous and destructive - she glanced at Heero's dark form, lips pursing grimly - didn't mean it was inherently bad.

No, she would keep it.

(And she would keep it, uhm... where did Heero even keep it? Relena furtively hitched up her sodden dress and managed to secure the gun under her garter.)

The trek to the car was a blur of anxiety and cold. Pagan insisted on wrapping her in a blanket and keeping her in the car while he went looking for Heero, but Relena insisted on going back with him and wrapping the blanket around Heero.

"Miss Relena, are those bandages?"

She saw him looking at the scraps of fabric tied around Heero's wounds and shook her head wearily. "Please, Pagan, don't ask. Not yet. Nobody else can know about this."

The eyes beneath his heavy eyelids were sharp and shrewd, and when she noticed this it was like she'd never looked him in the eye before. But perhaps the same was true for him, because he nodded and granted her her outrageous request.

She was a mess of nerves on the way to the hospital, sitting with Heero's head resting on one tigh and the gun pressed flat against the other; getting him admitted and returning home registered only as a string of partial lies and stuttered excuses. Relena felt awful and wanted nothing more than to get away from her family and friends to rest, recover, and think.

The gun rested on the soiled remains of her dress while she showered, opening the 'Warm' tap further and further, until the painful heat had lashed out all the shivers and uncertainty. _I'm giving this guy another chance, on_ my _terms,_ she confirmed to herself, _and if the others need to be kept in the dark about all of this to make it happen, so be it._

Father would be disappointed when he found out what she was doing. Not just because of the gun; theirs was a supportive family, a family that kept no secrets from each other - one that showered her in gifts and gave her everything she could ever possibly want, to show just how supportive it was even when it wasn't. But her father was a busy man, and these were busy times, and she wasn't a little girl anymore whose sole worth lay in her father's status and favours. If her father found out he would stop her and tell her to let others handle it, something she refused to do now that she'd come this far. There was something about the look in Heero's eyes that wouldn't let go of her, that compelled her to not let go of him.

Back in her room, Relena held the gun in her hand for a long time (weighing it, testing her grip, fingering the cold, hard edges) before hiding it. Not once as she sat on the bed thinking did it occur to her that soon the rebellious independence she was now still trying to hide might become a vital necessity, or that keeping the gun would become anything more than a symbolic vow to get to the bottom of this mystery of shooting stars and washed-up soldier boys.

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 **PSAN:** I just realised another bird I've caught with this stone: why did Relena wear airy summer clothes when she returned home from her trip to space, but a sweater and scarf when she visited the hospital? Because she'd had a dive into the harbour and didn't want to come down with a viscious cold! XD


End file.
